Page 326 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

308 Gay Pioneers: How Drummer Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

Editors’s Note:

ROGUES’ GALLERY:
Photos of Some Editors and Publishers in Drummer
and a Gay Defense of Sowing Wild Oats

As a sidebar, here’s a brief list of photographs of the pioneer cast
of characters who created Drummer: An LA photo of John Rowberry
appeared with his poem, “White Death,” in Drummer 5, page 36. There
is another leather-cult photograph of Rowberry crawling up stair steps
wearing a dog collar at the end of a leash. It was given to Fritscher in
1983 by Al Shapiro, and was published in Fritscher’s Gay San Francisco:
Eyewitness Drummer (2008).
There are two great photos of Jeanne Barney: Robert Opel’s shot in
Drummer 9, page 7; and in a mini-dress at the Hawks’ 1976 Leather Sabbat
where Rob Clayton photographed her receiving the Hawks Humanitarian
of the Year Award in Drummer 11, page 25.
Gene Weber took the photo of a just-becoming-editor Fritscher that
appeared in Drummer 17, July 1977, page 11 top, along with, in the same
issue, Weber photos of Society of Janus leather priest, Jim Kane, with Ike
Barnes, page 9. Weber also pictured Fritscher in his scuba photos of fisting
underwater in Drummer 20, page 17, and Drummer 25, page 91. A second
photo, a set piece shot by David Sparrow, shows Fritscher in a jockstrap
at the CMC Carnival in Drummer 20, page 76, because editor-in-chief
Fritscher, pressed by the necessity of invention, anticipated on location
how his CMC photo layout should look in the next issue, and acted out
what other leather players were still reticent to do in public on camera at
that time. This ad hoc “improvisation on location” is similar to the photos
of Fritscher, after the model did not show, in “Bondage” in Drummer 24,
pages 17, 18, 20. A photograph of Fritscher appeared in Embry’s Tenth
Anniversary Issue, Drummer 85, page 85, with Fritscher’s text, “Smut Is
Where You Find It,” page 86.
Fritscher published one of B. Moritz’s several photographs of the
naked streaker Robert Opel confronting LAPD Chief Ed Davis in the
Harvey Milk obituary issue of Drummer 26 in January 1979. The Moritz
photo appeared previously with a second, even more dramatic, Moritz
photo of Opel’s lovely body striding though the crowd toward Chief
Davis in Fred Halsted’s Package 6, pages 22-23, January 1977. LAPD
Police Chief Ed Davis also appeared in Drummer 6, page 13.
In a casual photo, Embry appears with his face turned ninety degrees
away from the camera in Drummer 25, December 1978, page 91. “Why
did he turn?” Fritscher asked. “Was it his 1950s reflex of self-defense
against being photographed at a gay event? Was it the LAPD arrest? Why

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved—posted 03-14-2017
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